


Peace of Mind

by lovelymeraki



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: 7x13, 7x13 bellarke, 7x13 spec, Bellarke, F/M, Red Sun Toxin, The 100 (TV) - Freeform, The 100 (TV) Season 7, The 100 (TV) Season 7 Speculation, bellarke kiss, bellarke one shot, blarke, red sun toxin hallucinations, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26210938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelymeraki/pseuds/lovelymeraki
Summary: The red sun toxin invades Clarke’s mind as she tries to get the shield back up around Sanctum. Bellamy tries to save her from herself.tw: suicidal thoughts/themes
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Bellarke - Relationship, Clarke Griffin & Bellamy Blake, Clarke Griffin/Bellamy Blake, bellamy/clarke, clarke/bellamy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	Peace of Mind

Sanctum was in chaos. 

Bugs. Bugs were everywhere. 

“Clarke!” She heard someone yell. She was trying to wrap her thoughts around what was happening, and her actions were lagging because of that. Screams were filling the air, mixing with the toxin slowly seeping into all of their senses. 

She moved, finally finding her composer.

“Bellamy!” she yelled, glancing towards the people around her before she started to sprint in the direction of the nearest building. 

She didn’t know why she yelled his name. She wanted everyone to be safe. She wanted to urge everyone to get to shelter, but for some reason his name was always the first one to reach her lips. Her brain had been engraved with his name. With him. And Clarke didn’t think that would ever change. 

The small classroom they had explored within the first moments they found this place was the first building her searching eyes latched on to. She ran towards it, trying to ignore the sting of the swarm trying to attack her. They were surrounding her, beating and biting against her skin as she fought her way past the small swing set. When she reached the classroom, Clarke flung the door open, slamming it shut immediately after she collapsed to the ground inside the small room. 

She gasped for air, allowing herself time to relax into the pain setting in from the wounds on her skin. She felt blood and knew her face was probably being marked with the destruction the bugs had made. 

Bellamy made it to the room next, followed by Raven and Gabriel. They blocked out as many bugs they could, collapsing to the ground in the same way Clarke had moments before. 

She was still breathing heavy, pawing at the blood on her face to try and get rid of it. “Where’s Cadogan and the other disciple?” she asked. 

“We lost them,” Bellamy breathed. He met her eyes from across the room, and his face showed every emotion he was feeling. 

Worry was etched into his features like an intertwined promise. As if that feeling was so familiar his face had no problem bringing it to the surface and toying with it.

“They’ll be okay. They’re smart enough to find somewhere to go.” she reassured, hating herself for it. 

She hated the hold his emotions had over her own. How one worried look made her want to ease whatever pain he was feeling, no matter what he had done to add to her own. It didn’t matter. It would never matter when it came to Bellamy, and Clarke hated that.

Raven rolled her eyes, glancing between the two of them. She was obviously not feeling as compelled to ease Bellamy’s worries as Clarke was. “We need to be trying to figure out how to fix this,” she said.

Clarke released a breath, grateful for Raven and her gift of bringing situations back to what’s necessary. Back to the problems that still needed solutions. 

Clarke’s brain was working on pivoting away from the emotions swimming underneath her skin, trying to grasp onto any ideas about what to do next. “The shield,” she said, “It’s down. Who would do that?”

“It doesn’t matter who,” Raven said quickly. “How do we get it back up with all of the bugs everywhere?” 

“The machine shop,” Bellamy suggested. “That worked last time.”

Gabriel shook his head reluctantly, looking as if he was only half focused on the conversation. The rest of himself was buried within his own thoughts. “There’s too much happening outside. Too many bugs. We can’t trust that whoever is in there will open the door for us.”

Clarke could feel her mind blurring the longer they stood in that room. The longer they allowed their bodies to process the air they were breathing in. “So what then?” she asked, “The radiation tower?”

He nodded. “If we assume most of the bugs are occupied with the people outside then that’s the safer option. Run there, get the shield back up, and then fix the bug problem.”

“What if the bugs follow us down there anyways?”

“If they do there shouldn’t be too many.” Gabriel sighed. “They swarm together. And most of them are distracted with the crowd outside. Just run fast.”

Clarke could hear the screams from outside. She could feel the way time was slipping through all of their fingers, waiting for the moment when there was none left. Waiting for the moment when everything would come collapsing within itself, the chaos becoming the only familiar thing until eventually even that would take its final breath. 

“We need to go now.” The words rushed out as if they were running away from her and her slipping nerves. “The air. We don’t have much time.”

Raven and Bellamy both nodded, stepping along with her as they neared the door. They both looked as if they were walking across the thinnest ice, waiting for the smallest crack to pull them under. 

“Wait,” Gabriel said, stopping all of them. “There should be antitoxin somewhere close. We just need to find it. If I can release it into the air it should start wearing off the effect quickly.” His words came out steady, and Clarke found her mind reaching towards that steady. That firm sense of a working plan. He glanced between all of them. “One of you needs to go get the shield back up. The code. Last time we were here, it should be the same. Do you remember it?” 

Clarke felt herself nodding. “Yes. I’ll go.”

Bellamy let out a humorless laugh. “Always the hero,” he muttered. 

She glanced at him, ignoring the pull to her heart at the look he was giving her. He looked like he wouldn’t mind letting the bugs get her, as if her life was the tiniest speck of dust amongst the load of anxieties inside of his mind. 

It was hatred, she knew it was. All the little moments of betrayal between them piled into one spot in his brain, easy for the red sun toxin to manipulate.

Because that’s what it was. Red sun toxin. Clarke knew she couldn’t afford to let herself look too far into any of it. She knew what the toxin did to her, and she needed to hold onto everything she could. Allowing herself to dwell on the one look she never wanted to see Bellamy throwing towards her wasn’t good in that moment. 

She focused back on Gabriel, ignoring the sympathy hiding behind his eyes. “You need to hurry,” she said, referring to Bellamy’s state of mind. “I’ll get the shield back up.”

Clarke reached for the door, making sure the rest of them were ready before she pulled it open. The chaos immediately swallowed them all up, and she ran. She forced herself not to look back as she sprinted towards the fields. She couldn’t trust herself not to go back for them if she saw them struggling, knowing she was weak when it came to the people she loved.

She expected the fields to be crawling with people trying to run as far away from the palace as they could, but they weren’t. They were empty, and she took that small relief softly. Letting it ease a sliver of her mind as she rushed towards the radiation towers. 

She was breathing heavy as she punched in the code, struggling to pull the numbers from her clouding mind. She could feel herself slipping, slowly creeping closer to the black hole the toxin had made for her within her own mind, waiting to be able to swallow her up and fold her within all of her deepest darkness. 

She entered in all of the numbers, watching as the shield slowly reclaimed its spot around Sanctum. She let out a breath to release some tension, grateful she was able to complete the task that rested on her shoulders. 

“Clarke.” A voice said from behind her. 

She knew who it was immediately. The only voice that had that much hold over her, bringing her back from any edge that she kept slipping towards. 

Clarke took her hands off of the keypad, spinning around to where Bellamy stood. He looked different. Younger. Familiar. 

“Bellamy,” she said, “what are you doing? I can handle putting the shield up on my own.”

He took a step closer. “Can you?”

His words confused her, and she tried to fight against it when that confusion tried to consume her. “I did. It’s up. We just need to get to Gabriel.” She moved to step around him, stopping when his hand reached out to grip her wrist. 

“Is it?” His words held that question as if it already belonged to an answer, waiting for the moment they would get to reveal it to her. She could feel the sleeve of his jacket rubbing against her fingertips. “Look again.”

Clarke directed her eyes towards the radiation towers, her anxiety climbing at the sight of the shield being down. There was no distant hum indicating the presence of the protective dome or slight shimmer in the air. 

It didn’t work. 

She rushed back towards the tower, trying to bring back the numbers her memory had held minutes before. 

The exhaustion was becoming something she couldn’t ignore. Exhaustion in this moment, in the moments holding her mind prisoner, and in those same kinds of moments stretching endlessly in front of her. And that feeling of her mind soaking in the undeniable presence of her draining energy prevented her from finding those numbers. 

The ones she needed to help the people she loved. 

Clarke let out some of her frustration, letting her head fall against the cool metal of the tower. She felt defeat. It stabbed at her heart, ripping it wide open until she felt that overwhelming hole in her chest she had learned to grow used to. 

“You can’t save us Clarke,” Bellamy said. He was inching closer, and she could almost feel his breath against the back of her neck. “Everything you try to do to save us just makes it all worse.”

She shook her head, feeling the pressure starting to build within her mind. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat as she pushed off of the tower, putting some distance between her and the taunting keypad. 

“I don’t want it to,” Clarke said. Her voice was laced with the kind of desperation that could bury someone’s words. “I-I try to protect you all.. I try to always do whatever I can to save you.. to save all of you.”

Bellamy looked at her, his gaze burning into her soul with the amount of disgust it held. “We don’t need you to save us. Every choice you make, everything you do when you think you’re doing better infects us all with more pain. That’s all you are Clarke.”

“I—“

“We don’t need you,” he continued. “We don’t need that pain.. Don’t you want us to be happy? Don’t you want me to be happy?” 

“Of-of course I do..” Her voice sounded small. As if it would take nothing for it to get lost in the weight of Bellamy’s words. “I—“

“Clarke, don’t you get it?” He interrupted her again, as if her words didn’t matter. Maybe they didn’t. “You are the problem.”

Clarke took in the truth sliding throughout his voice, and the rest of her words slipped back down her throat, falling into the pit growing inside of her stomach. Her weight broke underneath of her, and she collapsed onto her knees, welcoming the dull ache as her legs made contact with the solid ground. 

She was losing herself within his words. Within the truth. She felt it wrapping around herself, tight enough to squeeze out any last hopeful thought she had. 

Bellamy followed her movements, sinking down in front of her. A small, almost sympathetic smile played at the corner of his mouth. “There’s only one thing that will help us now,” he said. 

She followed his eyes as they trailed down to the ground. A thin scapple sat a few inches from her knee, the blade still coated in tiny specks of dried blood. She felt numb as she reached for it, her movements working on their own as she wrapped her fingers around the cold metal. She moved it towards her throat, her eyes on Bellamy’s. 

“Bellamy,” she whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”

He met her emotional stare with an empty one. “I can’t give you the forgiveness you need. Not this time. Not after everything you’ve done.”

She nodded slowly, one tear after the next slipping down her cheeks. She understood. She understood how forgiving her after everything she’s done would seem impossible. And she understood she didn’t deserve it. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, listening to Bellamy tell her this is what should happen. That this is how she brings them all the peace they deserve. 

“Clarke,” another voice said, clashing with the one shoving Clarke further down within herself. It sounded exactly the same, but it was almost undeniably different. Softer, warmer, more broken. And as more words reached her, she heard the raw heartbreak cracking within this voice. “Look at me.”

So she did. She opened her eyes, meeting the deep brown eyes she always saw within her dreams. He was different from the man who sat in front of her seconds ago, but she knew he was real. He wore the same worry he always did as he slowly eased closer to her. He dropped to his knees when he got close enough, mirroring her position. 

His eyes were glowing with emotions, and she saw his pain. The pain she caused. 

Her eyes fell shut again. 

Her mind wasn’t a safe place. Everytime she closed her eyes they were there. Everyone she killed, every death she felt was her fault. They haunted her, taunting her with the lost life she could have had. If things were different. 

Maybe that’s why people always wondered about the what if’s. It was easier to wonder instead of accepting what is. Clarke knew whatever peace she had the chance of finding would never come close to the real thing. It might try to suffocate all of the ghosts dancing across the whispers of her memories, but they would always be there, reminding her that whatever happiness she might feel in one moment wouldn’t last. 

It never lasts. 

“Clarke, listen to me,” Bellamy’s voice broke through again, lighting the darkness within her mind. “You don’t want to do this. The toxin, it’s making you think you need to, but you don’t.”

She shook her head. “I do,” she cried. “All I do is cause you pain. I hurt everyone I love. I hurt you.”

“This would cause us pain, Clarke,” he choked out. “Do you know what I would do if I lost you? God, I’d lose myself too. I wouldn’t be able to pick myself back up after a loss that deep. Please Clarke, put the blade down.”

Tears were slipping down her cheeks, soaking her in all of her pain. Sometimes she wondered if it was possible to run out of tears. To cry yourself dry until you lose one of the emotional outlets that releases a flicker of the loss picking at your heart like a vulture. Sometimes she wondered how easy it would be to lose herself in all of that loss. All of that pain. To just let the rest of her mind go, slipping down the river of tears that caressed her cheeks until all that was left of her was a puddle of who she used to be. The destroyed remains of the destruction that was her life. 

Bellamy’s pleas became the softest whisper underneath of all of these screaming thoughts. She knew if his voice couldn’t get through to her, nothing would. The toxin was consuming her, no matter how much she tried to fight to tell herself it wasn’t real. She knew the pain was. 

Because that’s what she was. It had become her. Everything she touched, everyone she touched, they were all affected by her. She was the pain, trying to fix things and only making them worse. Only causing suffering, no matter how much she tried to help. 

She infected people with an unending loss. 

She was the problem. 

Clarke could feel the metal of the scapple against her throat, resting there in the wake of her collapsing mind. She tried moving it closer, but she couldn’t. Her eyes flew open, glancing towards Bellamy’s hand gripped tightly around her wrist. 

“I need you.” His voice was soft, and she watched closely as a tear slipped from the sea of emotions pooling inside of his eyes. “I will always need you. No matter how much pain you think you cause, I will be there to tell you it isn’t unbearable. That you aren’t the one causing it, that you aren’t to blame for all the shit that’s thrown our way. No matter how bad it gets Clarke, you will never be the problem. You are so far from the problem.” He was breathing heavier, obviously trying desperately to get his point across. Bellamy reached a hand up to her cheek, brushing a piece of her fallen hair out of her eyes. “I will always give you forgiveness because you are worthy of that Clarke, and I won’t let you do this.”

Clarke tried to reach for the truth embedded within his voice, wondering if words were enough to fight off the harmful fog swarming inside of her mind. 

“I wouldn’t survive losing you.” 

He was close enough for her to be able to feel his breath fanning against her own lips. His eyes held the same pain she felt, and her own heartbreak reflecting inside of his eyes made her lose focus. 

Bellamy saw this hesitation, drawing the scapple farther away from her own vulnerable skin. His other hand reached up to lightly graze her cheek again, slipping over the dampness that soaked it. She leaned into his touch, wishing she would never have to feel it leave. A flicker of relief from the toxin in her mind moved through her body every time his thumb cascaded over her skin. 

Another tear dropped from her eyes as they fluttered shut against Bellamy’s touch. She couldn’t latch onto a safe place. His words felt safe, but she could hear the sadness powering them. She was still haunted by it all when she closed her eyes. 

She heard Bellamy move even closer, and she knew they were only separated by the idea of air. Her breath caught, as if that made a difference in the inevitable.

She felt his lips brush against hers. Bellamy’s lips were soft, exactly like she always imagined, and they fit against hers perfectly. 

It was a kiss as light as the promise of forever. 

And it was enough for Clarke to feel a wave crash against her drowning mind, washing away all of the endless thoughts dragging her under. It was a moment of bliss, and her mind felt free from the chains she thought she would live with forever. 

Bellamy hummed against their connected lips, and she moved closer to him, weaving her chilled fingers through the thick curls she loved so much. 

Love. 

That was all Clarke felt in that moment, and it filled her up, breaking down all the remnants of her eternal pain as if they were nothing. As if nothing could ever come close to how she was feeling now. And in that moment she knew love wasn’t weakness. It gave her a strength nothing else could. It pulled her back from the edge, sparking a fire inside of her that she knew would help keep her fighting. 

After another outstretching heartbeat of their lips engraving their mark against one another, they both pulled away. And when she opened her eyes to meet Bellamy’s, the pain wasn’t there anymore. 

She didn’t see any heartbreak hidden behind the joy dancing across his beaming eyes, and when Bellamy pushed himself off of the hard ground, offering his hand to help her up, she accepted it instantly. 

His hand wrapped around hers as if it had been waiting for a moment like this, and she let him pull her back up from the ground. She felt weightless, and Clarke knew from the content smile lacing Bellamy’s features that he wouldn’t mind bearing some of her pain for her. 

They walked back towards the palace together, their bodies connected through their intertwined hands. She glanced towards Bellamy, knowing she would never truly be alone, and the smile that formed on her own face was true. It came from the feeling of peace rushing through her, and in that moment nothing could take that away from her. 

Clarke was happy, and she was home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed, thank you so much for reading! xx


End file.
